Twitter wants to be a troll killer

Twitter, like the rest of the internet, has had a bit of a troll problem. Of course, they've not had a problem with proper trolls who expertly wind people up, but in 2015, trolling means 'abusive people who try and make people cry', according to the papers.

We feel sorry for proper trolls who made it an art-form, rather than people who just shout 'rape' and 'cancer' at women.

Anyway, Twitter has been blamed for a lot of abusive internet behaviour and CEO Dick Costolo is taking personal responsibility for it. That's not to say he's been creating fake profiles and shouting at strangers online, but rather, he's taking accountability for the social media site's problems with, what basically adds up to, a load of nobheads.

He's hinting that Twitter will be taking stronger action to reduce abuse on the network.

Costolo's comments came about after one of his employees brought up Lindy West, an American writer who was attacked following the death of her father, with the abuser setting up an account using her dead father's image to insult her further.

Costolo, in typical internet bigwig fashion used infantile language, saying that Twitter "sucked" at dealing with abuse and that trolling was driving away "core users".

"I'm frankly ashamed of how poorly we've dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO," said Costolo, adding: "It's absurd. There’s no excuse for it. I take full responsibility for not being more aggressive on this front. It's nobody else's fault but mine, and it's embarrassing."

It would be unlikely for the CEO to say something was 'embarrassing' about his company without wanting to do something about it, so over the coming months, we could well see some new measures from Twitter to try and stop people from setting up accounts just to shout at people with. Naturally, trying to stop that is like trying to punch a cloud of botfly, so we'll see how they get on.